The opening and success of mills and factories in the northern United States created many jobs for women, attracting girls from rural areas who normally worked the agricultural fields to support their families to the opportunities of working for wages instead of depending on sales of crops, providing a stable income. A main example of this is the Lowell mills, New England textile factories which were known to give the incoming girls jobs and places to stay to produce textiles. Unfortunately, the company had abused their power over the new workforce, with dwindling wages and poor working conditions, with no women in superior positions, so they had no say in what they wanted or needed. This led to two large strikes, one in 1834, and one in 1836, over wage reductions and raising of the rent in their boarding houses. These weren’t successful, but they led to a change in the approach of how they wanted to influence their workplace, resulting in the formation of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association, an early Union organization, allowing the girls to fight for safer conditions and better hours. A major result of the inurement of women in the workforce is a separation of women by class, with a distinct difference between the upper/middle class, and the working lower class. This separation was defined by if a woman had to work, which was associated with mill work, or if she was a housewife, defined by rearing children and maintaining the household.
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